In the field of business forms, a continuous mailer is commonly used by many businesses for the purpose of sending statements or bills to customers. The continuous mailer is comprised of a plurality of plies or sheets which are assembled and secured by means of lines of adhesive to an adjacent ply or sheet. Additional means for securing portions of a ply or sheet to other portions include lines of perforations which enable a portion to be easily removed from an adjacent portion. The several plies or sheets include printed matter in the form of messages or instructions for the use of the business or of the customer. The printing is normally performed on a business forms press and the several plies or sheets are then collated, glued by means of lines or spots of glue, die cut to provide precise sizes for the plies or sheets, perforated in both the horizontal and vertical directions, as required, and then folded along horizontal lines of perforations to produce a product ready for use by the business.
The continuous mailer form is imprinted by means of a computer and a line printer to transfer data or information to internal or underlying plies or sheets of the form by use of various image transfer methods. The imprinted forms are further processed to remove the margins which include the pin feed holes on either side of the folded product, decollated to remove a record copy or copies which are retained by the business, and bursted along the horizontal lines of perforations to produce a single business form that in a finished state can be mailed directly by the business to a customer.
These continuous mailer type forms eliminate the need and added cost for inserting a printed document into a conventional envelope, and then closing and sealing the envelope before mailing to the customer. In the process for producing these forms, it is common practice to use a die cutting technique wherein a chip of a common size, as 5/8" or 3/4" wide, is removed between adjacent and successive forms that have been printed on a continuous web of forms. The die cutting is normally performed on the insert ply or plies and on additional plies that are intended to provide a return envelope for the customer to use in paying a statement or bill. Removing the die cut chip enables and provides a means whereby a cross-web glue line or lines of glue can be applied to one ply either above or below the insert ply to form a sealed envelope type construction that contains the insert ply or plies and a return envelope. The two outer plies are normally glued along each end to provide an outgoing envelope along with an internal ply or plies that can be mailed to the end user or customer, and the customer then removes the internal ply and uses the return envelope to mail the internal ply along with a check or like document to the business for paying the bill.
Another means that can be used to provide an area on the business form for the purpose of applying cross-web glue lines is to produce a form that includes a free insert or one which is free of adjacent plies. In this particular form, the insert and the return envelope are mechanically cut and placed in equally spaced manner between adjacent forms. The face and the back of the outgoing envelope which contains the free insert is constructed in exactly the same manner as described above for the die cut construction. It should be noted that in both constructions described above, the area of the form that is allotted for the cross-web glue lines between adjacent forms that are printed on a continuous web is equal on each form and is normally 5/16" or 3/8" on both the top and bottom edges of the form. This method of cross-web gluing and die cutting or spacing of the internal parts or plies creates a problem by reason that all internal parts are normally die cut or equally spaced simultaneously. Thus, all parts are cut to the same size at the top and bottom of each form in the web direction. In addition the insert parts are normally placed above the return envelope parts for improved legibility reasons at the line printing operation during the post printing of the mailer forms. Also, it should be noted that in order to provide a sealing flap for the return envelope, a small section of the side opposite the side that contains the sealing flap (with remoistenable glue applied) must be removed before the return envelope can be properly sealed. Removal of the small section or portion opposite the sealing flap is normally done by the end user or customer by hand or by means of a removable strip. In this type construction, the small section is glued to the back ply of the outgoing envelope and is removed simultaneously when the outgoing envelope is opened by means of the removable strip. The envelope is opened from the back side in an arrangement defining a zipper type construction.
The zipper type construction is used by many suppliers of business forms. In order to use the zipper type construction to remove the small section, it is necessary to open the outgoing envelope by turning the envelope over and removing the contents from the backside. In a snap-out type construction, the small section is removed by hand after the internal parts are removed from the outgoing envelope. This method is cumbersome, causes fumbling of the parts, and is confusing to many customers. Another disadvantage of this type construction wherein the return envelope is die cut and produced simultaneously with the free insert is that the return envelope requires two parts or plies to produce a return envelope in addition to the two parts or plies that make up the front and the back of the outgoing envelope.
Representative documentation in the field of continuous type business forms used for mailers includes U.S. Pat. No. 4,418,865, issued to C. G. Bowen on Dec. 6, 1983, which discloses a continuous mailer assembly having three plies which define an outgoing envelope with a removable tab, a message ply and a return envelope.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,840,306, issued to L. Lombardo on Jun. 20, 1989, discloses a fold-over mailer having two plies secured about their marginal edges with an intermediate ply secured about three of its four edges to one of the plies.